IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 16, NO.
1, JANUARY 1, 2016
Development of an ANN-Based Pressure Transducer
Vaegae Naveen Kumar, Member, IEEE, and Komanapalli Venkata Lakshmi Narayana, Member, IEEE
Abstract— This paper presents the development of an artificial
neural network (ANN)-based improved inductive signal condi-
tioning circuit for pressure transducer with bellow as sensor.
A bellow is an elastic-type mechanical pressure sensor. The
deflection of the bellow due to applied pressure must be translated
into an efficient electrical signal for continuous monitoring,
wireless transmission, and digital readout. A ferromagnetic wire
attached to the bellow as a part of an inductive coil arrangement,
gets deflected due to applied pressure, thereby changing the self
inductance of the coil. An op-amp inductive signal conditioning
circuit (OISCC) is designed to produce voltage proportional to
changes in self-inductance, but the OISCC voltage versus applied
pressure exhibits a considerable nonlinearity error due to stray
inductances and component drifts. The ANN modeling estimates
and compensates the nonlinearity of OISCC. An embedded unit
is used for implementation of ANN learning process. The pressure
transducer with significant stability has exhibited high linearity
and sensitivity of ±0.35% and 10 mH/psig, respectively, in the
measuring range of 0–70 psig. The design and experimental
aspects of the technique are reported.
Index Terms— Artificial neural network, bellows, inductive
pickup, multilayer perceptron-direct modeling, operational
amplifier, pressure measurement, signal conditioning circuit.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE measurement of pressure in process industries is
important and critical as it is interrelated to monitoring
and control of various other physical quantities. A pressure
transducer generates an electrical signal proportional to the
change in the property of the sensing element due to the exer-
tion of force per unit area. Typically measurement of pressure
is performed in two stages of transduction. The first stage
of transduction involves sensing of pressure by mechanical
sensors such as Bourdon tube, diaphragm and bellows etc. The
output of first stage is mostly displacement or deflection of the
sensor. Various resistive, capacitive and inductive transducers
are available for converting the displacement changes into
electrical signal in the second stage. In general, these types of
transducers are compatible only for local operations and needs
effective signal conditioning circuit for continuous display,
wireless transmission and digital readout as well as on-chip
interface.
Manuscript received June 19, 2015; revised August 31, 2015; accepted
September 3, 2015. Date of publication September 9, 2015; date of current
version December 10, 2015. The associate editor coordinating the review of
this paper and approving it for publication was Prof. Zeljko Ignjatovicc.
V. N. Kumar is with the School of Electrical Engineering and the School
of Electronics Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India (e-mail:
vegenaveen@vit.ac.in).
K. V. L. Narayana is with the School of Electrical Engineering,
VIT University, Vellore 632014, India (e-mail: kvlnarayana@vit.ac.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2015.2477458
1530-437X © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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53
Pressure transducers using passive and active signal
conditioning circuits such as conventional ac bridges, op-amp
based circuits have been reported in literature for converting
mechanical sensors output into an electrical signal. A pressure
to electrical transducer with elastic capacitor as transduc-
ing element is proposed for the measurement of pressure
ranging from 0 to 1psig [1]. In [2], intelligent differential
pressure transmitter is developed to maximize the sensor
output and minimize cross-talk. Yamada et al. [3] designed a
switched capacitor interface for capacitive pressure sensor that
provides a linear digital output with accuracy higher than 8-bit.
Matsuoka et al. [4] have proposed a pressure transmitter
based on Piezo-resistive effect using silicon diaphragm as
pressure sensor with an over-protection mechanism. An intel-
ligent digital pressure transducer using universal frequency-
to-digital converter is reported in [5]. Subramanian et al. [6]
have developed a MEMS-type capacitive pressure sensor with
sensitivity in the order of a few femtofarads per kilopascal.
Bakhoum and Cheng [7] introduced a novel ultrahigh-
sensitivity pressure sensor for measurement of pressure over
the range of 0.77Pa, but the sensor should be vertically
mounted and larger tilt angles degrade the accuracy. A dual
diaphragm based vibrating wire transducer for pneumatic pres-
sure measurement is developed in [8]. It has high sensitivity
and dynamic response, but reduced precision and resolution.
In this paper, bellow is used as a primary sensing element as
it is simple, rugged in construction, capable of providing large
force and wide pressure range. However, the major drawback
is that it is unsuitable for dynamic measurements and can be
used as local indicator only. In industrial application, the pres-
sure measured at one location is required at another location
and needs to be transmitted to a remote distance. Hence an
additional circuitry is needed for converting and processing
the bellow movement into an electric signal, so that the
reading can be transmitted to a remote location. An inductive
pickup is used to sense the bellow movement, but the change
in inductance of an inductive transducer due to change in
process variable is generally very small. This small change in
inductance is required to be measured accurately in industrial
measurement systems. Hence, various analog and intelligent
signal conditioning circuits have been proposed by differ-
ent investigators to measure the small change in inductance
irrespective of stray capacitance effects, stray electromagnetic
field effects etc.
Conventional bridge circuits like Maxwell’s bridge,
Anderson’s bridge, Hay’s bridge etc; are balanced by means
of mechanical change of trimming resistances. The balancing
of bridges is very difficult in many situations due to electrical
interference between the bridge circuit and human body or
54 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 16, NO. 1, JANUARY 1, 2016

some part of the mechanism used. Modified bridge methods

are proposed to measure inductance effectively, but these
methods are time consuming, tedious and balancing requires
several iterative steps. Per Holmberg presented an automatic
bridge circuit balancing method for capacitive sensor to reduce
electrical interference [9]. A modified Maxwell-Wien bridge
for measurement of displacement based on inductance change
has been developed in which the effect of stray capacitance
and inductance are minimized [10]. A linearity of ±2% is
reported and the large value of percentage deviation is due
to aging effects and calibration error of bridge components.
An improved inductance circuit with Bourdon tube as pressure
sensor is proposed in [11] and the range of pressure
is 0 to 45psig with a resolution of 5 psig. The large sensi-
tivity of the circuit decreases the signal-to-noise ratio of the
circuit. In [12], a position sensor using modified differential
inductance measurement circuit was proposed. The limitation
of the circuit is that the direct connection of inductance in
the feedback path of op-amp provides derivative action to the
input signal, which may damage the op-amp. An op-amp based
pressure transmitter has been designed in [13] with a linearity
of ±2.5%.
An effective signal conditioning circuit also suffers from
stray effects, ambient factors, component tolerances and
ageing etc. Hence the signal conditioning circuit with the
integration of intelligent capabilities through soft computing
techniques is a potential solution for continuous monitoring, Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed ANN based pressure transducer.
wireless transmission and digital readout as well as on-chip
interface. In the past, ANN based linearization techniques have
been proposed for various sensors [14]–[16]. An intelligent
pressure sensor has been proposed in [17] with computer
simulations. In [18], artificial neural networks are proposed
as one of the most efficient techniques of self-compensation
of sensors based on linearization to build reconfigurable
measurement systems. Even though the investigated methods
are suitable for pressure measurement specific to a location,
no techniques reported so far to provide efficient solution
for digital readout, on-chip interface, wireless transmission,
component tolerances and time drifts as a whole.
This motivates the need to develop a novel and efficient Fig. 2. Schematic of bellow sensor with inductive pickup.
pressure transducer using an ANN based improved inductive
signal conditioning circuit with bellows as sensor. An analog
OISCC is designed to produce a dc output voltage proportional Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm to estimate and
to the pressure sensed by bellow, but the output voltage compensate the nonlinearity of the OISCC. The ANN-MLP
exhibits nonlinearity which is estimated and compensated improves the linearity of the OISCC output to an appreciable
by ANN modeling technique. The linear output voltage of range. An embedded unit incorporates the intelligence of
ANN is converted into 4-20mA by voltage to current (V-I) ANN and generates a linear voltage. A V-I converter converts
converter. A plug-in-module is proposed to implement the the output linear voltage into a 4-20mA current signal for
ANN technique. further processing. The following sections describe the design
aspects of various stages of the proposed technique.
II. P ROPOSED T ECHNIQUE
The block diagram of proposed pressure transducer is shown
in Fig.1. The OISCC produces an analog voltage proportional A. Theory and Design of Bellow Sensor With Inductive Pickup
to the change in displacement of the bellow sensor due to A straight ferromagnetic wire is attached with the rod of
applied pressure. The relation between the input pressure bellow as shown in Fig.2. One end of the wire is rigidly fixed
and OISCC voltage is quite nonlinear. The nonlinear voltage to the rod of bellow by a brazing technique, while the other
after digitization is processed by an ANN which is a simple end is inserted as a core of the pickup coil. In this design, the
multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network implementing ferromagnetic wire acts as a sensing element. With the change

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KUMAR AND NARAYANA: DEVELOPMENT OF AN ANN-BASED PRESSURE TRANSDUCER
in pressure, the rod of bellow along with the wire moves.
The movement of the wire inside the pickup coil changes
the self inductance of the coil. Let us consider Δx to be the
deflection of the rod of the bellow when it is subjected to a
gauge pressure (P-Po ). Here P is the applied pressure to be
measured and Po is the atmospheric or initial pressure.
Hence, from the principle of bellow [19], the pressure-
deflection relationship is give by
Rb2
Δx = 2N A(P − Po ) (1)
Et 3
where Rb , A and N represent the mean radius, effective area,
and number of convolutions in the bellow. E and t represent
Young’s modulus of elasticity and thickness of the bellow
material respectively. If E, A, N, Rb and t are fixed for a
bellow, then the deflection of the rod of bellow is linearly
related with pressure. So eqn. (1) can be written as
Δx = k(P − Po ) (2)
Rb2
k = 2N A 3 (3)
Et
here k is the spring constant of the bellow. Since the ferromag-
netic wire is rigidly attached with the rod of the bellow, the
linear movement of the wire may be assumed to be equal to
the deflection of the rod of bellow. If the ferromagnetic wire
is allowed to move freely through the pickup coil, then the
effective self inductance of the coil increases with the increase
in pressure. At atmospheric pressure or initial pressure Po , the
rod of bellow is at rest and the inductance of the coil is L 1 .
Let at pressure (P-Po ), the deflection of the rod from its
position at initial pressure Po, be Δx and self inductance of
the pickup coil increase from L 1 to L x by an amount ΔL,
so that
L x = L 1 + L
The length of the ferromagnetic wire with permeability μ
and cross-sectional area A1 inserted into pickup coil at initial
pressure is l1 . Let the total length, cross-sectional area,
permeability and number of turns per unit length of inductance
of the pickup coil be l T , A T , μo and n respectively. The self
inductance of the pick coil is
L 1 = μA1 n 2l1 + μo [ A T − A1 ]n 2l1 + μo A T n 2 [l T − l1 ]
L 1 = [μ − μo ] A1 n 2l1 + μo A T n 2l T
Let [μ − μo ] A1n 2 = k1 and μo A T n 2l T = L o , then (6) can be
written as,
L 1 = k 1l 1 + L o
At a gauge pressure (P-Po ), due to the deflection of the rod
of bellow, the insertion length of the ferromagnetic wire into
pickup coil changes from l1 to l1 + Δx. The self inductance
of the coil changes from L 1 to L x and is given by
L x = k1 [l1 + x] + L o
Substituting (7) in (8),
L x = L 1 + k1 x
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55
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of OISCC.
Comparing (9) with (4),
L
x = (10)
k1
By using (2), (10) can be written as
L = kk1 [P − Po ] = k2 [P − Po ] (11)
here k2 = (kk1 ) is a constant and the change in inductance is
proportional to the gauge pressure.
B. Op-Amp Inductive Signal Conditioning Circuit
The change of self-inductance is measured by using OISCC
and the schematic is shown in Fig.3. The OISCC consists of
(4) an improved inductance measuring circuit (IIMC) and absolute
value circuit (AVC) constructed by operational amplifiers,
diodes and passive components. The IIMC produces an
ac voltage Vac , proportional to the change in self-inductance of
pickup coil and AVC generates a dc equivalent of Vac . Three
op-amps IC1, IC2 and IC3 are present in IIMC. IC1 produces
voltage due to pickup coil, IC2 produces voltage due to
dummy inductor and IC3 acts as a high gain differential
(5) amplifier. The inductive pickup coil with bellow sensor forms
(6) one arm of a T-network and the other two arms are resistors.
This T-network is connected in the feedback of IC2 and
a similar T-network with dummy inductor L o equal to the
inductance of pickup coil at initial pressure Po , is connected in
the feedback of IC1. The necessity of using a stable impedance
(7)
of large value in the feedback of an op-amp can be overcome
by T-network. In IIMC, the resistors in the T-network are
1k resistors (R2 = R3 = R5 = R6 = R), the input
resistors of IC1 and IC2 are 10k (R1 = R4 ) and resistors of
differential amplifier are 10k (R7 = R8 = R9 = R10 = R  ).
The input excitation voltage Vin is provided by a stabilized
(8) sinusoidal oscillator.
At atmospheric or initial pressure Po , the output of
IC1 and IC2 are same and the differential output Vac is zero.
(9) At pressure P, the deflection of the bellow rod is Δx and
56 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 16, NO. 1, JANUARY 1, 2016

Fig. 5. Schematic of plug in module.

one neuron each in its input and output layers, and five
neurons in hidden layer. The MLP topology consisting of only
three layers is an excellent solution for small application
specific circuits such as sensor linearization [20], [21] as it
requires reduced number of arithmetic operations. The non-
linear operation of a MLP neural network compensates
the nonlinear characteristic of OISCC. MLP feed forward
neural network is a universal function approximator and
is simpler in implementation than other neural networks.
Fig. 4. Multilayer perceptron neural network for OISCC. The activation function in hidden layer is tan hyper-
bolic and output layer uses linear activation function. Tan
the change in inductance of pickup coil in IC2 is ΔL and hyperbolic activation is a monotonic S-shaped function
self-inductance is L x . and exhibits graceful balance between linear and nonlin-
The output voltages V1 , V2 and Vac of IC1, IC2 and IC3 at ear behavior. It maps numbers in the interval [−∞, +∞]
a frequency ω Hz are given by into a finite intervals such as [−1, 1] or [0, 1]. The impor-
  tant feature of activation function is that the nonlinear-
R j 2ωL 1 ity is smooth and is differentiable everywhere [22]. The
V1 = − 1+ Vin (12)
R1 R training and learning process for MLP is implemented by
 
R j 2ω (L 1 + ΔL) LM-algorithm. The LM algorithm is the most efficient algo-
V2 = − 1+ Vin (13)
R1 R rithm for training small and medium sized problems, as it
  has a faster convergence time and lowest mean square
Vin
Vac = V1 − V2 = j 2ωΔL (14) error [23], [24]. The LM algorithm is a combination of the
R1
steepest descent method and Gauss–Newton algorithm.
The output of IIMC is applied to AVC which produces The sum of the squared errors is minimized by updating
corresponding dc voltage VS . The AVC is a high input the weights in the direction of the greatest reduction of the
impedance absolute value circuit with a filter at the output least square function in the gradient descent method, whereas
to get pure dc voltage. The full-wave rectifier is made of only it is minimized by assuming the least squares function is
two matched resistors. The output of the AVC is locally quadratic, and find the minimum of the quadratic in the
 
Vin Gauss-Newton method [25].
VS = |Vac | = 2ωL (15)
R1 The output voltage of OISCC is normalized in the
range [0, 1] and applied as input to MLP. The OISCC
Substituting (11) in (15),
output is normalized to generalize and simplify the process
Vin of information handling for any variable and measurement
VS = 2ωk2 (P − Po ) (16)
R1 range. The target data for the MLP is a straight line with a
VS = k3 (P − Po ) (17) unitary slope. The LM algorithm trains the MLP and iteratively
 
updates the weights as well as biases. The coding for the
where k3 = 2ωk2 VRin1 is a constant. This shows output
MLP is carried out in MATLAB. The output of the MLP is
voltage of OISCC is proportional to change in pressure.
the linearized voltage V AN N .
The implementation scheme of the ANN is carried by a
C. ANN-Based Direct Modeling Technique plug-in-module (PIM) and is shown in Fig. 5. The PIM embeds
The ANN based modeling of OISCC comprises of a simple the intelligence of ANN by performing necessary opera-
MLP neural network and is shown in Fig.4. It consists of tions on the frozen weights and biases through registers,

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KUMAR AND NARAYANA: DEVELOPMENT OF AN ANN-BASED PRESSURE TRANSDUCER
Fig. 6. Experimental setup. 1. Ferromagnetic galvanized iron wire. 2. Bellow
sensor. 3. Pressure tank with gauge. 4. Multimeter and LCR meter. 5. Dummy
inductor. 6. Analog signal conditioning circuits - OISCC, V–I converter.
7. Transistorized power supply. 8. Microcontroller based plug in module.
9. Laptop for ANN and microcontroller programming.
multipliers and adders. The registers of PIM store weights,
biases, weighted inputs, intermediate sum, activation functions
and output of ANN. In the PIM, W, b, V , h, represents
weights, biases, weighted inputs, and hidden layer outputs
respectively, whereas S7 and O7 represents weighted sum and
output of final layer. Also NF denotes normalization factor
to be multiplied with the output of ANN to get the physical
linearized voltage. A micro-controller embedded unit is used
to implement PIM.
D. Voltage to Current Converter
The output of the PIM, V AN N is linearly related to the input
pressure and is given by
5
V AN N = (P − Po ) (18)
Pmax
where Pmax is the maximum value of pressure to be measured.
The output of the PIM is applied to the V-I converter through a
buffer to avoid loading effect. The output of the V-I converter
is 4-20 mA and is related to input pressure as
 
(P − Po )
I = 16 +4 . (19)
Pmax
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
The experimental setup and schematic diagram of the pro-
posed technique is shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 respectively.
A ferromagnetic galvanized iron wire of 2 mm diameter
and 30 mm length is used as a pressure sensing element.
As one end of the wire is rigidly fixed to the rod of bellow, the
other end is inserted into the inductive pick coil to act as a core.
The inductive coil is made from 1230 turns of a 46 standard
wire gauge super enamel copper wire. The coil is uniformly
wound on an insulating cylindrical former and placed inside
an aluminum cover tube to protect from mechanical damage
and external magnetic effects. The aluminum cover tube with
coil is fixed by brazing it onto the rear side of bellow, while
ferro-magnetic wire is taken out through a small hole of the
cover tube, so that it can move freely with the movement
of bellow. The bellow is made up of SS316 stainless steel
with 10 convolutions, a thickness of 0.889 mm, an outer
diameter of 31.75 mm, an inner diameter of 15.875 mm,
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57
a mean effective area of 445.35 mm2 and a Young’s modulus
of 28 × 106 psi. The bellow is subjected to a pressure supplied
from a pressure tank which is fitted with a gauge to measure
gauge pressure. The deflection of the bellow produces a change
in inductance of sensing coil and is measured by a LCR meter.
The pressure versus change in inductance is plotted and shown
in Fig.8.
The OISCC converts inductance change into dc voltage.
All the op-amps of OISCC are OP 07 operational amplifiers.
The input excitation voltage Vin of 5V and 100 Hz is provided
by a stabilized sinusoidal oscillator. The offset inductance of
the sensing coil with initial pressure is 50 mH. Hence, the
base inductance of pressure sensing coil with initial pressure
is approximately 50 mH. The dummy inductor is connected
in the feedback of op-amp, IC1 of IIMC is set to 50 mH to
get zero output voltage and then, the pressure tank is filled by
air in steps of 5 psi. The output voltages of IIMC and AVC
for different values of the air pressure are measured in both
increasing and decreasing modes by three-and-one-half digit
voltmeter. The AVC generates an absolute value of the output
voltage of IIMC.
The normalized OISCC output voltage is applied as input
to MLP for training. In the training phase, 15 data points
are chosen from the experimental data of the OISCC output
voltage in the pressure range 0-70psig. The target data for the
MLP is a straight line with unitary slope. During the testing
phase, the data points which are not used in training phase
are applied as inputs to MLP. The outputs of the MLP in
the testing phase are closely matched to the desired response.
After training, all the information of the linearization remains
embedded in only ten weight values and six bias values. The
parameters of the training phase are tabulated in the Table I.
The implementation of PIM is carried out by ATmega328
microcontroller unit which is operated at a maximum
frequency of 20 MHz and coding has been done in AVR studio.
ATmega328 is a high performance, low powered, low cost
microcontroller with enhanced RISC architecture. Fig. 9 shows
output voltage versus pressure characteristic of the OISCC and
ANN techniques. The effectiveness of the ANN technique is
clearly reflected from the graphs as its output closely matches
the desired response.
The nonlinearity error is obtained for the OISCC and
ANN techniques and the percentage nonlinearity error is
obtained as,
MV − T V
E= × 100 (20)
FSR
where E is the percentage nonlinearity error, MV is the
measured value, TV is the true value and FSR is the full scale
reading. The error analysis of the OISCC and ANN technique
is shown in Fig. 10. The nonlinearity is specified as maximum
deviation from the desired response. It has been observed
that the nonlinearity of the OISCC and ANN techniques are
±3.0% and ±0.35% respectively.
The measurement uncertainty can be used to evaluate the
precision of the measured data. The uncertainties of the
measurement process are obtained by calculating the standard
deviation of the outputs of OISCC and ANN techniques.
58 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 16, NO. 1, JANUARY 1, 2016

Fig. 7. Schematic diagram of the proposed technique.

Fig. 8. Characteristics of the bellow sensor with inductive pickup. Fig. 9. Output voltage-pressure characteristic for OISCC and ANN
techniques.
TABLE I
ANN T RAINING PARAMETERS AND S IMULATION R ESULTS

Fig. 10. Error analysis of the techniques.

where σ is the standard deviation indicating the dispersion of

measured data from its desired response, E d is the deviation
of the measured value from the desired value and N is the
number of data points. The standard deviation characteristic
The standard deviation is given by of OISCC and ANN techniques are shown in Fig.11. The
 static characteristic graph is drawn by plotting output current
E2 of 4-20mA against pressure variation from 0-70psig and is
d
σ = (21)
N −1 shown in Fig.12.

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KUMAR AND NARAYANA: DEVELOPMENT OF AN ANN-BASED PRESSURE TRANSDUCER
Fig. 11. Standard deviation characteristics.
Fig. 12. Pressure transmitter characteristic.
The performance characteristic of the proposed pressure
transducer is found to be quite linear with high degree of
repeatability. The notable feature of the transducer is very
simple and low cost. The technique is flexible with adjustable
measuring range and sensitivity. The modified op-amp based
network permits offset inductance compensation of pressure
sensing coil. The non inverting terminals of op-amps IC1 and
IC2 are connected to circuit common, the inverting terminals
are at virtual ground. The stray capacitance between terminals
of the sensing coils is negligible, since the sensing coil is
connected between ground and output. Thus, the inductance
measurement may be considered to be free from error due to
the stray capacitance effect.
In a Piezo-resistance or strain-gauge-type pressure measur-
ing technique, the sensing element is mounted on a diaphragm
or Bourdon tube which acts as a primary sensor, and the
change in the resistance of the sensing element is measured
by dc bridge circuits having a fixed sensitivity and con-
stant excitation. Moreover, the sensing element mounted on
the diaphragm is in direct contact with the process fluid.
Therefore, an additional circuitry is required to compensate the
effect of the fluid temperature. This makes the whole sensing
circuitry more expensive than the proposed technique. In the
designed transducer, the major part of the bellow element with
the sensing ferromagnetic wire is held at atmospheric temper-
ature. Hence, the effect of the air temperature is negligible.
The T-network with inductive coil is used in feedback path
of op-amps. It provides the stable impedance without deriva-
tive effects in op-amps. The stray effects, balancing limitations
and component tolerances of conventional bridge techniques
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59
TABLE II
C OMPARATIVE S TUDY OF VARIOUS M EASURING T ECHNIQUES
FOR P RESSURE T RANSDUCER
are overcome by the proposed technique. This technique is
much simpler than the conventional Piezo-resistance or strain-
gauge-type technique. The proposed ferromagnetic wire sensor
has a higher operating temperature range with a longer life
period when compared to the Piezo-resistive pressure sensor.
The proposed technique of pressure measurement has very
good accuracy and resolution compared to the conventional
measurements available in literature. The developed pressure
transducer is calibrated using dead weight tester having a
resolution of 5psig and it may be concluded from Fig.9 that
the transducer will follow the same linear characteristic at
a resolution of less than 5psig. The comparative study of
various developed pressure transducers is shown in Table II.
The pressure transducer proposed in [11] exhibits a linearity
of ±2% in the range 0-45psig, whereas the proposed trans-
ducer calibrated by dead weight tester, exhibits an improved
linearity of ±0.35% in the measuring range 0-70psig. The
range of developed pressure transducer may be enhanced by
proper selection of bellow and sensing coil. The uncertainty
analysis of sensing technique is performed and it has been
found that there is a reduction of uncertainty of the pressure
measurement.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A pressure transducer using an ANN based improved
inductive signal conditioning circuit with bellow as sen-
sor is described. The proposed technique effectively over-
comes the limitations of conventional bridge, modified bridge
60
and improved op-amp circuits. The plug in module of
ANN-MLP modeling technique incorporates intelligence into
signal conditioning circuit to make it free from component
tolerances, environmental drifts and ageing etc. The two-tier
structure of pressure transducer has been experimentally
validated with high linearity, sensitivity and repeatability.
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Vaegae Naveen Kumar received the M.Tech. degree
in electronics engineering with a specialization
in instrumentation and control systems from
Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University,
Kakinada, India. He is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree with the School of Electrical
Engineering, VIT University, Vellore, India.
His interests are in the area of sensors and signal
conditioning, signal processing, neural networks,
and fuzzy logic systems.
Komanapalli Venkata Lakshmi Narayana
received the Ph.D. degree in instrumentation
engineering from Andhra University,
Visakhapatnam. He is currently an Associate
Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering,
VIT University, Vellore, India. His interests are
in the area of sensors and signal conditioning,
measurements, process instrumentation, and virtual
instrumentation.